The Danish Competitiveness Council strives to help Denmark stay relevant in the future global competitive business environment. As part of their work, they invited business leaders to share their perspectives on the topic, i.e. what should Denmark do going forward to achieve an excellent business position in this arena? What is our moonshot project...

Corona crisis management has most certainly put your leadership to the test. Particularly in times of crisis, leaders can indulge in acting more as a manager, even though the balance between management and leadership can create faster change and more value.

So why not use the Corona situation to reflect on your own balance between your manager and leadership tasks? Maybe you need to adjust your approach right now, where you both must manage the crisis and lead the business towards a "new normal" on the other side of the crisis.

Inspiring leaders create more value

Good leadership is an untapped potential. An example of leadership research below shows that only 25% of managers are good leaders, half are “only managers” and 25% are bad supervisors. Two other studies reveal the challenge of leaders' mistaken self-perception of being inspirational. Thus, 77% of managers find themselves inspiring, while 82% of employees find their managers uninspiring. Recognizing that inspirational leadership correlates positively with commitment (+ 32%), satisfaction (+ 46%) and performance (+ 16%), then there will be reason to believe that better leadership can drive faster change, so your business gets ready to create value when the Corona dust settles.

Figure 1: Good leadership is an untapped potential

Of course, customers and competitors play a major role when you want to move forward with your business, but the balance between the good plan and the ability to execute is crucial, in other words the balance between management and leadership.

Many works on mapping and developing leaders' skills to ensure progress, but this is not enough in all cases. Have you tried to also map leaders' attitudes and work on developing them? My experience is that you can progress faster and further by combining the mapping of both skills and attitudes because it provides the basis for development or substitution for the common good.

A little inspiration for how it can be approached.

First, create a profile for each of your leaders on skills or attitudes respectively

Emballagegruppen sold to Schur

As at 14 August 2019 Schur International took over Emballagegruppen in Vejle from Maj Invest Equity. At the beginning of 2019, Maj Invest Equity acquired the family-owned company Good Food Group in Vejle, to which Emballagegruppen was affiliated as a 100% owned subsidiary until the transfer to Maj Invest Equity.

Emballagegruppen A/S which produces carton packaging and label products at two separate locations in Vejle, has a turnover of approx. DKK 180 million (EUR 25 million) and employs 130 people.

The employees create value through the customers, but skilled owner-managers nevertheless find it difficult to get the good plans to actually take place. They are often buried in daily hands-on chores. Here, an active and professional board with wide leadership experience can provide a competency allowance for redemption of employees' full potential - even at reasonable prices.